It depends on how dead- No I take that back- It depends on how big the dead room is.(ok -and yes, how dead)
If it's too small, there will always be early reflections which will produce unhappy comb filtering effects, which really messes with your head and causes bad karma and phase problems that will make you go bald (there may be a connection between bald and comb filtering, which leads us to wonder if there's such a thing as Bald Filtering)

We have a "dead room" that we cut drums in.
It's about 150 sq.ft. Odd angled walls.
12' ceiling. The top 4 ft of the room is a bass trap.
The bottom 4 ft is carpet- The middle 4 ft are fiberglass panels.
The floor used to be carpet but we've since put in a raised plywood floor.
The room is fairly dead. From there we can create early reflections and room sizes with various reverbs. We are very happy with drums cut in this room. (this really only works with standard 5 or 6 piece kits)
We have a larger room that is more live.About 400 sq ft with 16 ft ceilings (well, medium live- a combination of wood, carpet, and bass traps.)
We attempted to get a "live" sound from this room with mics in various locations. It always sounded like someones living room. (Well, maybe not that bad, but certainly not what you might imagine it sounding like in your head).
I think a high quality "live" sound room needs at least 700 sqft and a good number of hard surfaces. Of course, then everything sort of has the same sound.
So in conclusion, Dead Room can = good if constructed properly.
(Otherwise it will suck really badly)